1. Measuring Well-Being The OECD Better Life Initiative
Romina Boarini,
Head of the Well-Being and Progress Section
OECD Statistics Directorate

2. Outline Context OECD Better Life Initiative
The global well-being agenda : where do we stand
What’s next

3. Context

4. Where are we coming from
Long-standing debate on the limits of growth and needs to shift towards sustainable development
More recently: an increasing gap between what official statistics say about economic performance, and how people perceive their own living conditions
Risk that people may lose faith in governments’ ability to address “what matters to them”
In many countries there is an increasing gap between what official statistics say about economic performance, and how people perceive their own living conditions. The gap was already evident during the years of “good” economic performance until the early 2000s, but the crisis has exacerbated this sentiment.
In many countries we see an emergence of grass-roots attempts to define and measure specific aspects of people’s well-being and societal progress. Often focusing on local issues, these initiatives try to identify and monitor “what really matters to people”. Along with such initiatives comes a demand for appropriate measurement tools. A plethora of indicators on the “human dimension” of progress – such as peace, security, gender equity, social cohesion, democracy, governance and human rights – are being produced by research projects, think tanks initiatives, and programs of international NGOs. While their underlying methods and databases are sometimes opaque, these indicators are increasingly used by the media and policy actors as alternative means to palliate to the lack of institutional tools for “understanding the real situation”.
This risks jeopardizing the credibility of official statistics, public policies based on those statistics and government and politicians more generally. This may have a dangerous negative impact on the democratic process.

5. A consensus to go “beyond GDP”
GDP is a key measure to monitor macro- economic activity, productivity, demand for paid-jobs
GDP is not a metric for people’s well-being and is often at variance with people’s personal experiences
Measuring well-being implies confronting values: from “treasuring what you measure” to “measuring what you treasure” 5

6. Well-being: a long-standing focus of OECD work
Work on environmental and social indicators (1980s-90s); Green Growth indicators ( )
Analytic reports on alternative measures of well-being (The Well-being of Nations, 2000; Society at a Glance, 2006)
Several OECD World Fora (Palermo, Istanbul, Busan and Delhi) and regional conferences (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe)

7. Strong momentum and global resonance
An increasing number of initiatives to move ‘beyond GDP’:
UNDP Human Development Reports
Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report
EU 2020 and communication
UN Resolution calling for “holistic approach to development” to promote sustainable happiness and well-being
Rio+20 “The Future We Want” declaration, June 2012
Many national initiatives for measuring well-being in all countries of the world….

8. The global reach of the well-being agenda

9. The OECD Better Life Initiative

10. OECD@50 : the OECD Better Life Initiative:
Your Better Life Index
How’ Life?
Measures, analysis and future statistical agenda on what matters most in people’s life
: Better Policies for Better Lives

11. The OECD well-being framework
People rather than economic system
Outcomes rather than inputs and outputs
Both averages and inequalities
Both objective and subjective aspects
Attributes of both individuals and communities
Both ‘here & now’ and ‘elsewhere & later’

12. Selected results from How’s Life? 2011
Life in 2011 better on average in the OECD than fifteen years ago
Inequalities in all dimensions of well-being
No country is a champion in well-being but some trends do emerge
WE CAN SHOW CHARTS ON THIS IF NECESSARY…

13. No country is the champion of well-being
Good performance, percentage of green lights
The chart shown here refers to the 22 headline indicators of HIL.
For each dimension, each country is given either a green, an orange and a red light, depending on its performance in the most recent year (where a green light means that the country is among the 20% top performers for the indicator considered ; a red light means that the country performs among the 20% bottom performers; and an orange light denotes an intermediate performance.
The dashboard included in How’s Life shows 22 traffic lights for 34 countries. This chart here countries summarizes performance in two dimensions: the number of total green lights out of 22 traffic lights and the number of red lights out of 22 traffic lights: the higher and the greener the country in the chart, the better its performance; the lower and the more red, the worse its performance. [The colour is given by averaging the 22 traffic lights].
For instance Canada has 8 green lights, 2 red lights, and 13 orange lights. The USA has 9 green lights, 1 red light and 13 orange lights. Thus in principle the USA does slightly better than Canada (it should be slighlty darker but this is not visible).
What we see is that no country performs best in all dimensions.
Poor performance, percentage of red lights
Source : OECD calculations 13

14. Understanding people’s aspirations: Your Better Life Index

15. Your Better Life Index

16. What matters most to people ?
Weights given by users (in %)
The statistics provide some illustration about the potential information that the BLI can give us.
The 11 topics are working for you. While the importance of any given topic will always vary from person to person, all topics have been found to be important by users for evaluating well-being.
There seems to be a global consensus on being healthy, happy and wise above all else: Health, life satisfaction, and education, are consistently the top three indicators, whether you are living in the Nordic countries or in Latin America
There is also little difference between the sexes, suggesting that perhaps men and women are not as far apart as Venus and Mars.
These are of course not “rigourous statistics” as the sample is not random. However, at least in terms of sample size, one can compare people’s preferences across groups in the population.
Source : OECD calculations 16

17. The global well-being agenda: where do we stand

18. Key messages from 4th OECD World Forum
Much convergence in understanding of issues and in measurement approaches
Progress in measurement of some areas (e.g. subjective well-being, wealth distribution, time use) but
more conceptual work needed in other domains (e.g. governance, social connections, sustainability)
challenges in terms of periodicity, timeliness
More analytical work needed to promote use of new well-being metrics in the policy process
on the determinants of well-being (e.g. across domains, over different phases of people’s life-cycle, over time)
on the role of public policies (e.g. across population groups, different geographical levels)

19. Stocktaking and sharing experiences
A well-being cycle
Consultation
Domains that matter
Measures
Analysis and research
BETTER POLICIES
(+ more joined up)
Informed citizens
What we’re hoping for is to consolidate a well-being cycle in policy-making.
It starts with consultation, to identify the domains that matter.
Once we have the domains, we can develop measures.
When measures are more widely available, this enables better analysis and research, which leads to…
More informed citizens
New models for business
And better, more joined up, policies for well-being.
 These then feed into activity to take stock and share experiences, which all goes back into BETTER consultation, more informed choices about domains, more refined measures, etc. etc.
New business models
Stocktaking and sharing experiences

20. What’s next at the OECD

21. 2013-2014 Work Programme on Measuring Well-Being
Moving forward the statistical agenda:
Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being
Handbook on Measuring Income, Consumption and Wealth; Inequalities in the National Accounts
Wealth distribution dataset
Measures of social capital
Green Growth Indicators
Update of How’s Life? (Fall 2013) and of the Better Life Index (May 2013):
How’s Life? will focus on sustainability, gender and well-being, and jobs quality

22. From measurement to policy
Analytical work to understand the determinants of well-being outcomes
Two OECD horizontal projects will make use of these findings for policy:
Inclusive Growth: how to deliver economic and non-economic benefits of growth to all social groups and over time
NAEC (New Approaches to Economic Challenges): how to manage complex trade-offs (and synergies) in a multidimensional policy decision framework; building on country experiences (e.g. UK, NZ, Bhutan)

23. Continued interaction with research community and civil society
A platform for global discussion on well-being; Research Networks in many regions
5th World Forum in Mexico in 2015

24. THANK YOU!